A school district in South Jersey is now using an artificial intelligence system designed to detect weapons and prevent a mass shooting.

Hundreds of security cameras coupled with AI gun detection technology are keeping a close watch over the Glassboro School District. It's a new integrated system to help stop a potential threat at first sight.

"We want to stay on the forefront of anything we can do to keep our kids and our staff safe," said Al Lewis, superintendent of Glassboro Public Schools.

Lewis said the district is using ZeroEyes, a video analytics program with artificial intelligence that the company says can detect firearms within view of any camera equipped with its software. ZeroEyes has now teamed up with Singlewire Software, an emergency mass communication system that sends alerts to authorities and across the district.

"The new integration allowed us to not only eliminate the response time in identifying a weapon, but then the time to notify law enforcement and staff that there was a security incident potentially going on," Lewis said.

If a visible gun is detected by the software, a green box on the screen will track the weapon, and experts inside a 24/7 monitoring center are alerted, possibly before anyone in the school sees it.

"Those analysts are going to look at that alert that comes through, and they're going to make the determination, gun or no gun. Once that happens and they've dispatched the alert, that will go directly out to the client, and that whole process takes about as fast as three to five seconds," said JT Wilkins, senior vice president of sales for ZeroEyes.

The district said a building will automatically be locked down, and staff and police will be notified within seconds of detection.

Glassboro is the first school district in the country to utilize the combined systems.

"Just shows how committed we are to protecting our staff and students," said Chuck Baur, the director of IT for the Glassboro School District.

At least 250 cameras are spread out across six buildings in the district, four schools and the administration and transportation buildings. The superintendent said it is part of a critical layer of protection.

"There's the potential that if someone were to brandish a firearm far beyond our building's façade, we would still identify it, and law enforcement would be on site rapidly and with the knowledge of where the person was," Lewis said.

The technology was tested over the summer and is now up and running.